As a novelist I'm always trying to figure out the blueprint of someone's personality, always trying to figure out what makes a particular person tick. I do the same with places, as y'all saw in my novel Southern Living, where the town of Selby became a character in its own right.

Nashville, however, is hard to pin down. Consider:

Two blocks from the national headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention is Hustler Hollywood, a high-end, grocery-store-size emporium with trained "sexologists" who can answer just about any question you have about male or female reproductive anatomy. (I know; I've learned a few very important things from them.)

We are home to Al Jazeera's news bureau for the Southern U.S. ... yet we've got plenty of xenophobic rednecks spitting tobacco juice out the windows of their trucks.

We are home to Taylor Swift ... and Jack White.

Our airport has signs written in both English and Japanese -- and we've got a Japanese consulate here.